Alice Vander Vennen, born in 1957, in Canada, has worked as a professional artist since 1980. A child of immigrant parents who left war-torn Holland, Alice has used her art to capture stories of loss and hope; courage and strength. First trained as a sculptor at Calvin College, USA, with further training at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Alice now works in three-dimensional assemblage, participating in numerous exhibitions throughout North America. Her work is in public, private and corporate collections both here and abroad.
Artist’s Statement
“I work with multiple materials, such as fabrics, branches, wire, copper, paper and ceramic shards, creating an assemblage as part of a visual language suggesting a story. The narrative speaks of gathering the work of divergent cultures, histories and generations. Materials from around the world, created by many hands, are represented in a single multimedia assemblage. Fragile branches may be used as framing devices; tapering willow twigs and knotty grape vine tentacles are bent as if resisting the interstitial pull of perhaps a hundred different textiles, each attached with thread, strings, wire and weighted with smooth stones or other found objects. The assembled sculptural form may be reminiscent of a quilt, a canoe or a totem. I strive to have the materials form a new voice of a gathered people, a celebration of the human spirit in relation to its Creator, whether from secret spaces or the most flamboyant expressions.”
Media
view a video of Alice being interviewed at the Oeno Art Gallery
read an in-depth interview by the World of Threads Festival
review and order two published books of Alice’s images
view a video of a mini-workshop given during the COVID-19 crisis
view my “virtual artist lunch” presentation for the OENO Gallery, November 20, 2020
Artist Representation
OENO Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontario
Selected Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
“Traversant”, Artist-in-Residence, LM Studio, Hyéres, France
“Matter and Matrix”, at Langdon Hall, Cambridge
“Passages”, Gallery at the J, Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre , Toronto
“Transforming”, The Al Green Gallery, Toronto
“Stories Lost and Stories Found”, Crimson Feather Gallery, Alton
“C Formations”, Permanent Sculpture Installation and Commission, Town of Cobourg
Petroff Gallery South, Toronto
Yorkminster Park Gallery, Toronto
“Sticks, Stones and Colour Tones”, Colborne Art Gallery, Colborne, Ontario
Group Exhibitions
“Colour Break”, OENO Gallery, Prince Edward County, Ontario
“Terrain”, Craft Ontario, Toronto
“Five Year Retrospective”, The Al Green Gallery, Toronto
“Verona Tessile”, Verona, Italy
“Rock, Paper, Scissors!”, OENO Gallery, Prince Edward County, Ontario
“From the Ground”, OENO Gallery, Prince Edward County, Ontario
“Free Motion”, Art Gallery of Northumberland (with Melanie Brown)
“Catch the Weave”, Earls Court Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario
“Travel”, Pearson International Airport, Toronto
“Convergence”, Tom Thomson Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario
“Women’s Work – Celebration of Life”, Three Women show at Roy Bonisteel’s restored Johnston Gallery Church, Trenton Ontario
Juried Exhibitions
Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Show, Philadelphia
Des Moines Arts Festival, Des Moines, Iowa
Kimball Arts Festival, Park City, Utah
Ann Arbor Street Fair, The Original, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Art Fair on the Square, Madison, Wisconsin
Gracie Square Art Show, Manhattan, New York City
Utah Arts Festival, Salt Lake City, Utah
Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival, Reston, Virginia
Ruidoso Art Festival, Ruidoso, New Mexico
Toronto Outdoor Show, Toronto. Participant since 2001.
Armonk Outdoor Show, Armonk, New York
Cherry Creek Art Festival, Denver, Colorado
One of a Kind Show, Chicago, Illinois
World of Threads, Oakville, Ontario
Las Cruces Art Festival, New Mexico
The Artist’s Project, Toronto
Toronto Art Expo, Toronto
Craft as Art Festival, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island, New York
Wells Street Art Festival, Chicago, Illinois